Field notes
Playbooks, teardowns and the occasional argument — everything we have learned helping creators grow across every major platform.
WebP vs JPEG is the wrong question on its own. Here is which format wins for photographs, screenshots, logos and social uploads, and why.
Every platform recompresses your upload. Compressing first, correctly, is how you control the result instead of letting their algorithm decide.
Pinterest recommends a 2:3 Pin at 1000x1500. Here is why that ratio wins, what happens to taller Pins, and the title and description limits alongside it.
Facebook image size by placement: feed posts, link cards, Stories, cover photos and ads - plus the crops that differ between desktop and mobile.
LinkedIn image size by placement: feed posts, link cards, document posts, profile and company banners - and the mobile crop that decides what is seen.
Twitter image sizes on X: 16:9 for single images, 1200x628 for link cards, and the timeline crop that decides what people actually see.
TikTok video size is 1080x1920 at 9:16. The harder part is the safe zone - the caption, the action rail and the username cover a third of your frame.
YouTube thumbnail size is 1280x720 at 16:9 - but the number that matters is the 170 pixels wide it is actually viewed at.
Every social media image size that matters, organised by aspect ratio rather than by platform - because the ratio is what stays true when the pixels change.
Instagram image sizes by placement: feed, portrait, carousel, Reels cover, Stories and profile. Three ratios cover all of them.
Every YouTube video publishes its thumbnail at several resolutions. Here is how to download any of them, including the maximum-resolution version.